Thanks for creating this new topic. I think this story in the New York Times is an accurate description of what goes on on the beaches in Dubai.

Dubai swats pests ogling beach beauties

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Temperatures have dropped from blazing hot to balmy, the turquoise waters now have a refreshing chill and the sand is just about bearable to walk on.

As winter arrives in this Persian Gulf city, the masses are thronging by the tens of thousands to its white sandy beaches, wearing, in an unlikely exercise in maritime coexistence, everything from black flowing abayas to slinky bikinis.

Thronging right alongside them are Dubai"s "beach pests," the gangs of men who trudge through the sand, fully dressed, to ogle the women.

Mostly laborers at the front lines of Dubai"s building boom — toiling on manmade islands, innumerable high-rises, even a dome in the desert for the world"s largest indoor snow park — they flood the beaches every weekend to leer at women, photograph them and occasionally try to grope them in the water.

"They pretend to take pictures of their friends, but they are really taking pictures of you," said Anika Graichen, 23, a German hotel receptionist who has lived here for three years. She lay on the beach last week trying to ignore various groups of men who passed by with their eyes locked on her.

She is almost used to them now, she said. "I think I can understand it," she said. "It"s the only place they can have a look at women."

Indeed, for the estimated 500,000 foreign workers here, most from the Indian subcontinent, the chance to spot a woman in a bikini may be hard to pass up.

They typically live in a Dickensian world of squalor, working 12-hour shifts six days a week, often denied their wages of about $150 per month for months at a time. Most of them secure work by taking out loans from recruiting agencies at home to get here, forcing most to stay on for years without seeing their families and loved ones. The workmen have become prevalent in Dubai"s public parks and beaches as their numbers have swelled, and because of the lechery-on-the-beach factor, they are especially noticeable at this time of year.

They tend to beachcomb in groups, their camera-equipped cellphones always at the ready. Many do not know how to swim; some enter the water wearing their traditional robes, made of thin white cloth that becomes transparent when wet — and reveals far more of their anatomy than most beachgoers want to see. Incidents of physical harm to women are rare, though the police have arrested flashers and men committing lewd acts in public.

On Friday, Saifi, a metalworker who would give only his first name, walked along a beach with four friends, pausing from time to time to look around and chat. All in their mid-20s, the men were dressed in jeans and slacks. Saifi"s bright orange shirt made him impossible to miss.

"I come here almost every weekend," he said. "This beach has no problems, but the others have become more problematic for men."

He meant the police. He said that he was stopped at another beach two weeks earlier.

"The police said to me, "Why are you here, why aren"t you wearing a bathing suit?" " he said. "Then they told me to leave."

With a giggle, he admitted that the cause for his eviction was that he had been staring at women.

"Every man looks at a woman in a bathing suit when he sees her," he said. "What can I do? I"m a normal man." At a ladies-only day at a local beach earlier in the week, Nisrine Ben-Stitou, 28, a Moroccan citizen who moved here and works in a clothing store, said the harassment was such that she no longer went to the park or the beach on the weekend.

"Some people take pictures, which makes me crazy, or they stay and they watch you," Ms. Ben-Stitou said. "I went one time, and I said I will never go back. I feel so free in this country and I feel safe, but what happens on the beach — I don"t know why the authorities don"t do something about it."

Dubai officials, keen to attract tourists to the beaches, say they are trying. They have vowed to crack down with a security plan that includes plainclothes officers and a "three-strikes policy" aimed at keeping out the worst of the offenders.

"The goal is to get people to use the beaches for what they"re meant to be used for," said Brig. Khamis al-Mazeina, director of Dubai"s Criminal Investigation Department, which polices the harbors and beaches. "There are naturally people who create problems and who are ignorant, but we intend to deal with them."

Mr. Mazeina said his department had built new watchtowers to scan the beaches and added 35 undercover policemen to patrol as beach bums, looking for the first signs of trouble. Though many workmen fear being barred outright, Mr. Mazeina insists he intends to protect their rights, too, by ensuring that they are treated with courtesy and respect.

"When they see people hanging around for no reason other than to harass women or to try to speak with them, police are authorized to take action," he said. "We want people to feel secure on our beaches, and we can easily spot people who are not there for the beach. We"ll be watching and if we see anything we will be getting involved."

On a recent day, plainclothes officers stood atop a watchtower as several officers approached a man who had been photographing a group of women. The man and several of his friends were quickly brought up to the air-conditioned watchtower.

"If we see someone taking pictures like that, we are going to demand to see the photos," said one officer, who identified himself only as Abdullah because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. He took the man"s camera phone and began flipping through the photos. "We would then delete the suspect photos and give him a warning."

If the men are spotted taking photos again, Abdullah said, the police will make a formal notice; on a third episode, they will be barred from the beach.

The police say they have arrested more than 500 people under the new policy, the vast majority of them on immigration violations, and several more for outstanding warrants. But 15 were detained, according to police department records, for "a breakdown in public behavior."

"You try to scare them a bit just to get them to stop," Abdullah said. "Ask him, "What are you going to do with this picture? Would you like it if someone was photographing your sister?" That"s usually enough to get the point across."

Dance DJ Grooverider was arrested at Dubai airport for alleged possession of a small amount of cannabis and pornography and is awaiting trial, local press reported on Tuesday.

Grooverider, whose real name is Raymond Bingham, was detained on November 23, the day he was supposed to do a gig at a Dubai club, the English-language daily 7Days reported.

It said customs officers found the pornographic DVDs and a small amount of cannabis in the record collection of the 40-year-old DJ, who co-hosts a weekly drum and bass programme called 'Fabio and Grooverider' on BBC Radio 1.

The Western-oriented emirate of Dubai, one of seven that make up the United Arab Emirates, is a leisure hub in the oil-rich Gulf and draws millions of visitors every year.

But the UAE imposes tough penalties for all drug-related offences -- four years is the usual sentence for possession, while trafficking carries the death penalty.

Pornographic material is also banned in the UAE, where nude images in foreign periodicals and books are usually scratched with black ink or torn out.

Police in Dubai say they have smashed a major vice ring, arresting 247 people in raids on 22 alleged brothels.

A total of 170 prostitutes and 12 pimps, mostly from China, were arrested along with 65 clients of various nationalities, local press said.

The police chief said such raids were a frequent occurrence but were not usually announced to the media.

In March, UAE police announced they had deported about 4,300 prostitutes from Dubai during 2006.

"It is important in the light of the activities being carried out by these networks to show there are crackdowns and there are efforts by police," said Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim in quotes reported by Emirates Today.

He added that the move came after the United Arab Emirates passed a law to combat human trafficking.

"We cannot tolerate this kind of behaviour that is against human moral ethics and our religious beliefs," he said.

Dubai is considered to be the most liberal of the seven-emirate group, with a booming sex industry.

MP's have called for a study into how widespread homosexuality is in Bahrain

The government of Bahrain is taking action to stamp out homosexuals in the country.

In a wide ranging set of proposals MP's have set out a number of initiative designed to rid the country of homosexuals.

Parliament also demanded that the Interior Ministry stop granting any residence permits to foreign homosexuals.

MP's have called for a study into how widespread homosexuality is in Bahrain.

Bahrain is known as one of the more tolerant Muslim nations in the Middle East, and has recently undergone a period of political liberalization.

However, homosexuality remains a crime, and the government has periodically deported expatriates living in the nation for their sexual orientation.

The country only held its first elections in 2002, and since then politicians have mainly addressed themselves to "moral" issues such as banning female mannequins from shop windows and tackling the widespread problem of "sorcery."

The bi-cameral parliament is dominated by Shia and Sunni Islamist parties.

MP Shaikh Mohammed Khalid Mohammed said that people were complaining about homosexuals entering the country.

The ministers have called for homosexuals to be 'rooted out' of hair salons and massage parlours:

"Those people are either from the Philippines or Thailand and they come for these two jobs, which they use as a curtain for their homosexual behaviour and immorality."

Shockingly, the proposal will instruct teachers to look out for homosexual tendencies in children and to 'punish them accordingly.'

Homosexuality has been considered illegal in Bahrain since 1956 when, as part of the British Empire, it was given the Indian Penal Code.

Homosexuals can be given up to 10 years in prison though this is rarely put into practice.

In 2002 the government allegedly deported 2,000 gay Filipino workers for homosexual activity and prostitution.

The single British businesswoman was last night facing up to six years" jail after she was caught canoodling in public with a holiday hunk.

Authorities — under growing pressure to curb the excesses of westerners who flock to the Muslim emirate — say she will also be deported from the country where she has lived and worked for three years.

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Glitzy ... Dubai is a playground

Publishing firm manager Michelle was arrested after a cop saw her having sex on Jumeirah Beach. It is believed she was put in a cell.

She had earlier got drunk during a champagne brunch which turned into an all-day binge.

Michelle, 30, linked up at the bash with the British holidaymaker, known only as Vince, and joined him for a walk along the shore.

A police officer later spotted the pair having sex on the sand and let them off with a caution.

But the same cop arrested them both when he returned soon after — and found them at it AGAIN.

Sources said Michelle, who works in Dubai for magazines firm ITP Publishing, launched an angry four-letter tirade after her second romp was halted.

She is alleged to have called the cop a f****** Muslim **** and tried to hit him with her high-heeled shoe before being restrained.

Sex outside marriage is considered an offence in Dubai — one of the seven states which make up the United Arab Emirates.

Michelle was later charged with that, plus indecent behaviour in public, being drunk in public, and assaulting a police officer.

Authorities have warned her she faces between three months and six years in jail in the Arab state.

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High-flyer ... Michelle Palmer's firm

Her lover faces a similar sentence. And last night unconfirmed reports from Dubai suggested the desperate pair had MARRIED in a bid to reduce their jail terms. They were understood to have hastily organised a civil ceremony soon after their release on bail.

Both Michelle and the man have already made one court appearance and are due to reappear on a date to be fixed following the alleged incidents last Friday.

Mortified Michelle was full of remorse yesterday and begged authorities to show mercy.

She sobbed: "Because this is known everywhere they"re going to make an example of us and we"re going to get a higher sentence.

"We are in so much trouble and my family and everybody are affected. Until someone is in this situation they could never know what it"s like. It"s bad — it"s so, so bad. They are being pushed into a corner to make an example of us. I"m panicking — my mum is on anti-depressants. I can"t say anything else. I"ve got to go."

High-flyer Michelle is associate publisher for ITP, which produces more than 60 magazines serving the Middle East"s consumer, technology and business markets.

She was a regular at swish local parties.

Friday Brunches have become a favourite with Brits there — offering "all you can eat and drink" deals for a set price.

A friend said last night: "Michelle"s a nice girl who"s made a very big mistake. God only knows how she must have felt when she sobered up.

"She went out with a group of friends and workmates to a champagne brunch party. The booze was flowing all day and she must have got carried away by the time she met Vince — a pal of one of her workmates.

"They went for a walk on the beach. They were pretty plastered and a cop found them having sex."

The friend added: "The jails out here have a terrible reputation and Michelle"s praying they go easy on her. But they seem under pressure to make her an example.

"Having sex in public here is taken very seriously. But it"s twice as serious if you"re not married." Westerners have flocked to Dubai, the Middle East"s glitziest playground, for fun and sun.

But officials have recently come under pressure to crack down on their visitors" wilder antics. Beaches have become particularly sensitive areas, with moves to segregate families and single men.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Two British nationals were arrested in Dubai. The case is currently under investigation."

Yeah well, the dumb cunt should've known better. It's not like she just got there, she's been there for years and she must've heard enough stories to know not to do that sort of thing there.

I do think several years in jail is far too harsh for such a thing and it's typical that the British tabloids are playing it again as the "poor Brit who gets unfair treatment abroad" but she simply should have known better, and being drunk is hardly an excuse, certainly not in the Middle East !

Britons party on in Dubai despite arrest of woman for alleged sex on the beachBy Colin Freeman in Dubai12 July 2008

British expatraites in Dubai continued to party away this weekend - despite last week's stern reminder from the kingdom's rulers that Sex on the Beach should remain restricted to the cocktail menu.

Revellers enjoy the nightlife in Dubai

A week after the arrest of British saleswoman Michelle Palmer for an alleged drunken tryste on the shores of the Persian Gulf, fellow expats appeared to have lost little enthusiasm for the work-hard, play-hard lifestyle for which the Emirate has become famous.

In the Double Decker, a packed London bus-themed pub near the soaring tower of the seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel, Simone Dobson nursed a vodka and orange that was possibly not her first of the day.

Yet she said that as long as revellers did not test the authorities' liberal attitudes too much, the worst that could happen after a night's carousing was a hangover.

"Both the work and social life are brilliant here," said the 36-year-old management consultant, as a middle-aged businessman drunkenly murdered the Beatles' Twist and Shout on the karoake.

"But I'm afraid anyone who did that kind of thing would be really stupid. You are in a Muslim country and you must respect their laws. If you're going to drink, you don't wander the streets afterwards - you get in a taxi and go straight home."

The perils of ignoring that advice have been starkly demonstrated by the case of Ms Palmer, 36, who was arrested on Dubai's Jumeirah beach along with British mobile phone executive Vince Acors, 34, following a drinking spree of the sort with which many in the Double Decker might well be familiar. Charges have yet to be confirmed, but if they are brought - and if she is found guilty - she could face up to six years' jail for her alleged sexual affair, drunken behaviour, and assault on the officer who tried to arrest her.

This weekend Ms Palmer's parents are understood to have flown to Dubai to support their daughter, whose lawyers are believed to be lobbying the desert kingdom's prosecutors to show leniency rather than making an example. Less sympathetic, however, were her fellow expats, for whom the Emirate's tough attitude to yobbishness - along with its year-round sunshine and home comforts like IKEA - is just one of the many good reasons why 100,000 Britons now live here.

"I'm sorry, but if someone does something like that they're a silly moo," said Stuart Frost, 42, a legal executive sunbathing on the strip of public beach where Ms Palmer was arrested. "If you have been here for three years, you should know how to behave. And if you assault a police officer in any country you are in trouble, not just here."

Not all of Dubai's do's and don'ts are that straightforward, however.

Offering bars and alcohol as well as high tax-free salaries has certainly helped attract the foreign workforce, who have helped build its gleaming skyscrapers and turn it into the Middle East's answer to Hong Kong. Yet among the indigenous Muslim population - now outnumbered by guest workers by nearly 10 to one - it has also provoked a debate about erosion of public morality - not dissimilar to that currently raging in Britain.

The result is a hybrid of liberal and illiberal rules. Wearing a bikini on the beach is fine, but walking the street while drunk can get you arrested, as can flicking a V-sign. Alcohol is tolerated and pork is on sale, yet the merest trace of cannabis in the bloodstream carries a stiff jail sentence. Pop stars like Elton John gig here, but satellite television showing homosexuality is banned, and Dubai's thriving clubs and bars are unlikely ever to offer gay nights.

"Dubai is by far the most liberal place in the Gulf region," said Omar Hadi, an English-educated businessman of Iraqi descent. "However, there is a cultural identity that they want to keep, and some of the stricter laws reflect that."

Yet for all the talk of how the case has highlighted the tensions between the country's Muslim monarchy and the hedonistic tendencies of its well-paid Western workers, one new cultural phenomenon may probably be more to blame than any other. It is "the brunch", or, as Dubai's expats know it, "brunching".

Around noon every Friday, as Dubai's teetotal Muslims take the day off for prayers, the expats make an equally ritual pilgrimage to various hotels offering cheap all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffets. But while it has now become something of a local institution, an all-day drinking marathon in the 40C heat offers considerably more chance of getting out of control than a Saturday night out back home.

"Brunch can get very messy," admitted Hayley Monaghan, 23, from Liverpool, working in Dubai as a hostess for a local airline, one of many well-groomed young women heading into the Double Decker on Friday, where the advertised "brunch" lasts from midday right through to 3am. "You can get all you want to eat and drink for 150 dirhams, which is only about £20."

Indeed, it was a champagne "brunchathon" at Dubai's Airport Meridien Hotel that allegedly proved Ms Palmer's undoing nine days ago, and which has prompted local police to announce special "brunch patrols" aimed at curbing the excesses.

Yet on Friday it seemed to be business as usual at the Meridien: groups of smartly-dressed revellers milled around in varying stages of drunkenness after gorging themselves on lobster and bubbly buffet, and lying prone on the dancefloor, a drunken couple gyrated vertically to the sounds of Don MacLean's American Pie. It was only 6pm.

"I didn't think really think it would be like this out here," said recruitment agent James Penn, before The Sunday Telegraph was bundled out by the hotel's nervous Indian manager. "But I did have friends who said you would see more drunk people out here than in Britain."

Whether Dubai's authorities now feel the need to send out a message about that trend will probably be shown in any sentence given to Ms Palmer, if she is found guilty. She is expected to face a judge in coming weeks. Yet even the briefest of jail time will be grim, according to one local expat, who served the mandatory month for drink driving. Typically for Dubai, the prison he ended up in had just been built and was relatively comfortable. But that did not prevent it being "a terrible shock to the system," he said. "I woke up hungover in a cell, thinking 'Christ, am I going to get raped by some big guy named Abdul?'. They also put you in a prison uniform and shave your head - you feel like a lab rat."

Worst of all, though, was the "disgusting" prison diet of chicken and rice, and the limit of just three 10-minute cigarette breaks a day. Should Ms Palmer follow in his footsteps, all-day brunch may never have seemed further away.

"These new personnel have been deployed, especially at the Jumeirah Open Beach, because of the incident that happened there last week," said Abdullah Mohammed Rafia, the assistant director general for environment and public health affairs.

"The lights will be on for 24 hours so that people can walk freely and enjoy the beach at night. We know that there will always be some section of people who get involved in wrong acts, but it is our job to remind them about the regulations of the country," Mr Rafia said.

Separately, Dubai's Criminal Investigation Department said police have detained 79 people, mostly foreigners, over the past two weeks for indecent behaviour on several public beaches. Zuhair Haroun, a police spokesman, said suspects were detained for "disturbing families enjoying the beach" with their behaviour.

Thousands of European and Asian expatriates live and work in Dubai, one of seven semi-independent states that form the United Arab Emirates.

Police Colonel Khalil Ibrahim al-Mansouri said undercover personnel would also be deployed, especially at weekends.

"Sexual contact is private and belongs behind closed doors and not in public or at a beach. If police catch people taking part in less serious sexual contact then they usually will let the individuals off with a caution," he said.

"However, if it is serious then they will be taken in to face legal proceedings."

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Westerners were getting too racy on the beaches of this Persian Gulf tourist haven, and a police crackdown on topless sunbathing, nudity and other indecent behavior has resulted in 79 arrests in recent days.

Undercover officers are strolling the sand while others stand guard in new watchtowers to enforce the social mores of this Muslim city-state, which is a booming business center that is attracting growing hordes of foreign tourists.

Authorities said they began the decency campaign after police detained a British man and a woman who were allegedly having sex on one of Dubai's sprawling beaches earlier this month.

Over the past two weeks, police have detained a total of 79 people whose behavior was "disturbing families enjoying the beach," Zuhair Haroun, a spokesman for Dubai's Criminal Investigation Department, said Monday.

First-time offenders may be issued a warning, but if caught twice, tourists could be referred to the public prosecutor for possible criminal charges, authorities said.

Thousands of European and Asian expatriates live and work in Dubai, where native Emiratis make up only about 20 percent of the estimated 1.2 million residents. Shopping malls and fast food restaurants have replaced traditional Arab houses, and English has overtaken Arabic as the emirate's lingua franca.

Many Emiratis and Arabs visiting from other Persian Gulf countries increasingly feel Dubai's ambition to become a cosmopolitan metropolis and tourist destination is overrunning their own traditions and contradict what they feel is culturally acceptable.

Unlike elsewhere in the conservative Persian Gulf, tourists in Dubai are often seen wearing skimpy bikinis on public beaches and walk the city's streets in shorts. Alcohol is freely available in hotel bars and restaurants in this regional businesses and entertainment hub.

While pursuing the police crackdown, Dubai has embarked on a public awareness campaign to remind its Western visitors and foreign residents that the city may have flashy hotels and glitzy skyscrapers but it also is a Muslim country with traditionally conservative values.

The city is installing signs warning tourists in Arabic, English and several other languages not to sunbathe topless or change clothes in public, said Abdullah Mohammed Rafia, an official with the Dubai Municipality whose office is overseeing the public awareness campaign.

Authorities are "taking action in response to numerous complaints" filed by people who visit the city's beaches, Rafia said. Complaints have ranged from families "offended by displays of nudity" to women sunbathers who say groups of men stare at them while at the beach.

The police campaign also will target people who harass beachgoers with acts "deemed offensive, immoral or disrespectful," including loitering and voyeurism, said Dubai's acting police chief, Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina.

Some tourists who were enjoying Dubai's simmering sun Monday said the new campaign left them confused about what is considered appropriate in Dubai.

"I understand that I have to respect the rules of the country," said John MacLean, a British tourist on holiday with his girlfriend. But, he added, "I am not sure if I can kiss her or touch her in public."

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